The development of software applications in the field of image-processing medical technology differs from that in other fields because it must take into consideration special protocols and additional specific characteristics of the medical domain. The software development in this field consequently requires specifically adapted software solutions, for example solutions adapted to the high volume of image data to be transferred, to increased electronic networking, or to the increasing complexity of the clinical tasks to be managed.
In the past, software applications in the medical field were also produced monolithically, meaning that if changes were required it was always necessary to modify the complete application unit. This process was always tied to extremely high expenditure and was also susceptible to errors. For that reason, a change was made to developing medical software applications with the aid of high-performance, generic, so-called frameworks. The generic frameworks are used to increase the productivity of the application development. Examples of such frameworks are .NET, J2EE and OpenGL. The disadvantage of these generic frameworks is seen in the fact that so far they have not been tailored to the medical domain, so that the application development for the most part must still be realized manually, despite the use of the generic framework.
One example of a medical framework is described in the cited document EP 1 906 304, to which we refer with respect to content in the present patent application. The disadvantage of using frameworks that are directed specifically to the medical domain, however, is that the respective application is so-to-speak fixedly linked to the respective framework. As a result, a replacement of specific framework components or the replacement of a framework with a better framework, for example that of another manufacturer, is only possible with limitations or not at all.
The structure of medical applications generally comprises several layers with respectively different components. This problem is made worse when considering a free component selection, flexibility and improved ability to replace components because the involved application components generally have very complex dependencies, so that a change made for one component usually requires a cascade of changes to other components.